Honey is a wonderful product
that is often used in sauces, brines, and other barbecue recipes. What's even more wonderful and
fascinating is the way in which bees produce honey.

Honey Production

Foraging bees seek out flowers
in bloom and suck the flower's nectar into special cavities inside their bodies.
There the nectar is mixed with enzymes that convert sucrose into fructose or
glucose, which are more highly concentrated in solution than sucrose.

The nectar is deposited in the
hive, where hundreds of bees beat their wings furiously to circulate air over
the nectar, reducing its moisture content. The nectar becomes honey when the
moisture content is down in the 14-20 percent range. The honey is then stored as
food for the hive.

It is estimated that bees must
collectively visit up to two million individual flowers and travel many
thousands of miles to produce just a single pound of honey.

Colony Collapse Disorder

Colony collapse
disorder (CCD) is a phenomenon that became widely publicized starting in
2006 when entire colonies of worker bees vanished for no apparent
reason. This has a significant impact on agricultural crops that must be
pollinated by bees.

The causes of CCD are
not well understood at this time, but factors being studied include
disease, environmental stress, bee nutrition, pesticides, and migratory
beekeeping.

The honey we commonly buy in
the supermarket is often a heated, filtered blend of several types of honey. It
has a nice golden color, but is not very complex in aroma or flavor. If you're
looking for something really special, you should seek out "single-flower"
honeys—created from the nectar of a single flower type. The sourwood honey
used in the Best Ribs in the Universe recipe
is a single-flower honey.

A bee characteristic known as
"flower fidelity" causes bees to visit only one type of flower,
skipping over others, as they single-mindedly collect nectar. This results in an
amazing assortment of single-flower honeys, each with its own unique
personality. Beekeepers take advantage of flower fidelity by moving their hives
to follow the season and location of certain flowers, thus producing some very
rare and spectacular honeys. Flower fidelity is also important to the
fertilization of the flowers, as the bee transports pollen within the species as
it moves from flower to flower.

The color of single-flower
honeys can range from almost clear (acacia honey) to dark brown (buckwheat
honey). Lighter colors usually have a more subtle flavor, while darker varieties
tend to have greater intensity. Texture can range from thin to thick to clumpy
to almost granular. There are as many as 3,000 different varieties
available...almost as many varieties as there are flowers in the world.

Forms Of Honey

Single-flower honey is sold in
several forms. Most common is liquid, where the honey has been extracted from
the comb. It is also sold in the comb, or as liquid and small comb pieces mixed
together. "Cream", "spun", or "whipped" honey is
the result of a specially controlled process of crystallization. This makes the
honey lighter, thicker, and spreadable.

Honey
Crystallization—Is It Bad?

One common misconception about
honey is that when it gets cloudy and crystallizes, it has gone bad. This is not
true—in fact, all honey will crystallize over time. The rate of crystallization
is determined by the makeup of the nectar. Some honeys will crystallize in just
a few days, while others will remain liquid for years. If honey begins to
crystallize, it can be liquefied by placing the container in hot water for about
15 minutes.

Crystallization occurs faster
at low temperatures, so it's better to store honey at room temperature rather
than to refrigerate it. It should be tightly capped to keep the honey from
absorbing moisture in the air—if too much moisture is absorbed, yeasts can
begin to grow.

More Information
About Honey

You can learn more about
honey by visiting the National Honey
Board's website at www.honey.com. You can
also use their honey locator to find
single-flower honey sources near you.

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